Boyne Thunder Poker Run 2012 - White/Yellow DONZI?

OK, so I had the privilege of riding on NAS-T last week end during the Boyne Thunder Poker Run. NAS-T is a completely reworked 1991 Express cat, 39' long, 12' beam, with twin 1,350 and Arneson #6 Drives.

Unfortunately, as we were pulling away from the dock before the event started, the port drive hit a submerged object just beyond the dock, bending the skeg on the drive, and curling the tips of 2 of the blades on the Herring prop.

When we first planed off to get to the staging area to begin the parade past the downtown area, the boat was crabbing, and wouldn't turn because of the bent rudder. The "captain" jumped in the water with a 15" Crescent wrench and bent the skeg back as best he could. Another test, and he deemed the boat safe for the run. Even with a trashed prop and bent skeg, with 7 people and full fuel we hit 133 GPS mph!

As we were exiting the channel from Round Lake into Lake Michigan, there was a white/yellow DONZI 18 with people waving like crazy at us. I would love to know who that was!

We made it 90 miles before disaster struck again. We had been cruising at 125 GPS mph for about 5 minutes, and the captain IMMEDIATELY caught it when the port engine temp went from 110 to pegged at 240! He slammed both throttles to idle and shut down both engines. Pretty amazing that we just coasted uneventfully to a stop from 125 mph!

Raising the engine hatch, we discovered oil everywhere, and a blown gasket on the blower. When we got back to the dock, and got the boat on the trailer, we discovered that the transom mounted water pickup on the port side was missing. It is likely that it too hit the submerged object that damaged the skeg/prop, and was cracked/weakened by the impact. When it broke off, the engine which had been happily singing an awesome tune at 5,000 rpms went without cooling water, and quickly overheated. Big time bummer.

But, the silver lining was that a group in a volunteer boat (42' Fountain with triple 525s, named DRINKIN FOUNTAIN), towed us back for about 3 hours to the ramp next to Irish in Lake Charlevoix. We had a blast with them, and they must have had a brewery on board, because they had 2 EXTRA cases of beer that they gave us. Hey, we were no longer in the POKER RUN, so alcohol was OK.

So, if you were in the White/Yellow DONZI 18, please let me know who was waving at us like crazy.

http://youtu.be/bG64RiAjDY4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HrAO3Y9OWo